Prof. Pier Luigi Dragotti

Pier Luigi Dragotti is Professor of Signal Processing in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department at Imperial College London and a Fellow of the IEEE. He received the Laurea Degree (summa cum laude) in Electronic Engineering from the University Federico II, Naples, Italy, in 1997; the Master degree in Communications Systems from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland in 1998; and PhD degree from EPFL in 2002. He has held several visiting positions. In particular, he was a visiting student at Stanford University, Stanford, CA in 1996, a summer researcher at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, NJ in 2000 and a visiting scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2011. Before joining Imperial College in November 2002, he was a senior researcher at EPFL working on distributed signal processing for sensor networks for the Swiss National Competence Center in Research on Mobile Information and Communication Systems.

Dr Dragotti was Technical Co-Chair for the European Signal Processing Conference in 2012, Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing from 2006 to 2009 and an Elected Member of the IEEE Image, Video and Multidimensional Signal Processing Technical Committee. He was also the recipient of an ERC Consolidator Award for the project RecoSamp. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Theory and Methods Technical Committee and a member of the IEEE Special Interest Group on Computational Imaging.

His research interests include sampling theory, wavelet theory and its applications, sparsity-driven signal processing with applications in image super-resolution, neuroscience and fields estimation using sensor networks.

Prof. Tarek S. El-Bawab

Tarek S. El-Bawab is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jackson State University (USA). Before this he was with Alcatel-Lucent USA (now Nokia) as Project Manager with the Network Strategy Group (CTO organization). Earlier, he was involved in networking research with a number of organizations, including Alcatel-Lucent; the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Colorado State University (USA); and the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, University of Essex (UK). Before this he led large-scale international telecommunication projects in the Middle East for 10 years.

Dr. El-Bawab research interests include telecommunications, network architectures, optical networks, performance analysis, telecom standards, and engineering education. He has more than 70 scholarly journal/conference papers and patents. His book Optical Switching is one of the most comprehensive references in its subject. He is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Communications Magazine, the Series Editor of Springer’s Textbooks in Telecommunication Engineering, IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) member, and NSF Review Panelist.

Tarek led the Telecommunication Engineering Education (TEE) initiative and movement (2008-2014), which resulted in recognition of network/telecommunication engineering as distinct ABET-accreditable education discipline on November 1, 2014. He is the first recipient of the IEEE Communications Society’s (ComSoc) Education Award due to this work (2015). The citation of this award reads: “for outstanding contributions to the definition, and to the accreditation criteria, of modern communication/telecommunication engineering education; and for making changes to our education system that benefit our community, society, and the profession.”

He has served IEEE and the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) in numerous capacities. He is Board Member of the ComSoc Board of Governors (2014-2015, 2018-2019), and Board Member of the ComSoc Educational Services Board (since 2012). He is the ComSoc Director, Standards Development (2018-2019); and served as the society’s Director, Conference Operations (2014-2015). He served as Board Member of the IEEE Educational Activities Board, EAB (2016-2017), and is currently Member of the EA’s Committees on Standards Education and Continuing Education. He is a founding/active member of several ComSoc technical committees, and was elected Chair of the Transmission, Access, and Optical Systems (TAOS) Technical Committee for two terms. Tarek has served as symposium chair, workshops Chair, and organizer in several ICC/Globecom Conferences, and organized/chaired the ICC/Globecom International Workshop on Optical Networking Technologies (IWONT) for 10 years. He is also member of the IEEE Computer, Electron Devices, Photonics, Education, and Intelligent Transportation Systems Societies.

Dr. El-Bawab has a B.Sc. in electrical engineering, and a B.A. in history, both from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. He holds an M.Sc. in solid state science from the American University in Cairo, and an M.Sc. in telecommunications and information systems from the University of Essex, UK. He obtained his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Colorado State University.

Prof. Dapeng Oliver Wu

Dapeng Oliver Wu (S'98--M'04--SM’06--F'13) received a B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 1990, an M.E. degree in electrical engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 1997, and a Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, in 2003.

He is a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. His research interests are in the areas of networking, communications, signal processing, computer vision, machine learning, smart grid, and information and network security. He received University of Florida Term Professorship Award in 2017, University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship Award in 2009, AFOSR Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award in 2009, ONR Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award in 2008, NSF CAREER award in 2007, the IEEE Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (CSVT) Transactions Best Paper Award for Year 2001, and the Best Paper Awards in IEEE GLOBECOM 2011 and International Conference on Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Wired/Wireless Networks (QShine) 2006.

Currently, he serves as Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks, and IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Advances in Multimedia between 2006 and 2008, and an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He is also a guest-editor for IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Special Issue on Cross-layer Optimized Wireless Multimedia Communications. He has served as Technical Program Committee (TPC) Chair for IEEE INFOCOM 2012, and TPC chair for IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2008), Signal Processing for Communications Symposium, and as a member of executive committee and/or technical program committee of over 80 conferences. He was elected as a Distinguished Lecturer by IEEE Vehicular Technology Society in 2016. He has served as Chair for the Award Committee, and Chair of Mobile and wireless multimedia Interest Group (MobIG), Technical Committee on Multimedia Communications, IEEE Communications Society. He was an elected member of Multimedia Signal Processing Technical Committee, IEEE Signal Processing Society from Jan. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2012. He is an IEEE Fellow.